Eyedrops and Insomnia
by Manic 8-Ball
Summary: When Robin stays up far too long past bedtime he starts hearing voices. Fortunately he's not crazy, he's just out of eyedrops. Slight RobRae or at least I think its slight.


_**A/N:** Okay, so I know I said I would concentrate on Dogs of War until it was finished, but sometimes one creative idea blocks another, so I went ahead and wrote this one, and it's not even Inuyasha related. Hopefully there will be a short Inuyasha piece in the future, but you never know. Anyway, for the TT fans out there who may have actually heard of me, here's little oneshot._

_**Disclaimer:** I don't have any legal claim or otherwise on Teen Titans, and since I'm not sure who they really belong to in name I'll just say that Cartoon Network and DC Comics called it first. Also, I don't have any claim on any song by Coldplay, much less the song mentioned in the following story, so don't even bother._

* * *

"_When was the last time you slept, Robin?"_

The voice had come from nowhere and despite his well trained reflexes he jumped in his seat. At first he thought he hadn't heard her enter the room because he had his cordless earbuds in, but that couldn't be it because his earbuds were actually modified from the earbuds that he and Batman had used to communicate but still allow normal hearing. Still, he reached over and paused his mp3 player.

"Raven? Was that you?"

"_No, it was the ghost of Christmas Past."_

Robin chuckled inwardly. Only Raven would be able to maintain her wit and humor in their current situation. He looked at the clock on the wall across the room and blinked at its blurry form. Finally giving up, he removed his mask and reached for the bottle of eyedrops to find that it was empty. Shaking it disgustedly, he tossed it over his shoulder and started to get up to retrieve a new one from the bathroom.

"_You know, if you need eyedrops you could just ask me—I've got plenty to spare."_

Robin stopped as he was getting up and looked around. "Raven, would you stop that? It's kind of creeping me out. And as far as eyedrops go…"

"_You don't need to talk aloud, Boy Wonder—people might start thinking you're crazy if they find you talking to yourself. Just think it and I'll hear you."_

Robin frowned slightly and then realized how odd it really had sounded with him speaking to an empty room._ "Okay then. Anyway, as far as eyedrops go I'm not sure I could use yours—most eyedrops sting the crap out of my eyes and leave me as good as blind for close to a half an hour."_

Robin could swear he heard a sort of soft laugh. _"So that's the Boy Wonder's great weakness, huh? 'Attention all bad guys, Robin's one true weakness is cheap over-the-counter eyedrops…' We'd better not let that get out, or better yet, you'd better keep your eyes covered. Oh wait, you already do." _Again, Robin thought he could "hear" snickering of some kind.

"_Ha ha, very funny Raven,"_ Robin thought at her as he reached the bathroom and looked in his cabinet for another bottle of drops. _"Aw nuts…"_

"_Let me guess—out of eyedrops?"_

Before Robin could answer a small black space opened in his cabinet and a pale hand reached through with a bottle of drops. Robin started to reach for it, but the hand kept moving until it hit his face.

"_Sorry—I'm usually there a little more completely to see where I'm going."_

Robin took the eyedrops that her outstretched hand held out to him. _"That's alright. It actually kind of helped me wake up."_ Examining the eyedrops further he noted that they were the same brand as his. _"Well, I can honestly say that I never expected us to share the same preference in eyedrops."_

"_Small world, isn't it? Oh by the way, your borrowing my eyedrops is contingent upon you not getting any eye-goop in my dropper bottle."_

Robin blinked, completely at a loss as to what to say. After a moment staring at the bottle he collected himself. _"Am I to take that to mean that you don't want me to backwash into your eyedrop bottle? Is that even possible?"_

He got the distinct impression Raven was rolling her eyes. _"It's not only possible but probable."_

Robin shook his head. _"How? I mean if you hold the dropper outside your eye to put drops in, how is this supposed eye-goop going to get up into the bottle?"_

Now he could definitely tell she was frowning in confusion. _"What do you mean outside your eye? Don't you have to put the dropper in the corner of your eye in order to get anything in there?"_

Robin tilted his head back and stared up at the eyedropper he held over his eye. _"No, you don't have to. I prefer to actually drop them into my eye—sticking the dropper into my eye is not very comfortable." _He finished putting the drops into his eyes and put the cap back on the bottle. "Ummm…"

"_Here,"_ Raven thought as Robin saw the black portal open in his cabinet again. This time he reached through until he felt his hand bump into something hard and covered with hair.

"_Oops, sorry. I guess it really is difficult. I couldn't tell how deep it was."_

"_That's alright."_

He felt her hand take the bottle and he pulled his arm back through the portal. He looked his arm in wonderment and thought, _"Weird."_

He walked back to his desk and was about to turn his mp3 player back on when she spoke again. _"You know, you never answered my question."_

Robin sighed and leaned back in his chair. If they had been speaking face to face he knew he would have heard her intake of breath to ask him again, but before she could he answered her.

"_Three weeks, five days, five hours, and thirteen…no fourteen minutes."_

Silence reigned for a few moments and Robin took the time to put his mask back in place.

"_That would be about four hours before Slade came back on my birthday…and about a half hour before my failed surprise party."_

Robin grimaced. He was afraid of the direction his answer would take their otherwise innocuous conversation.

"_Yeah, that would be about right. How about you?"_

He thought maybe he had asked one question too many when she suddenly replied. _"Three weeks five days, five hours, and 35 minutes…I win."_

Robin sighed loudly, _"Yeah, I guess you do—but it's a dubious honor at best, don't you think?"_

"_Yes, I suppose it is."_

Robin hesitated to press the issue, but decided to plow ahead anyway. _"So why can't you sleep, Raven?"_

"_Why do you think, Boy Wonder? For being such a great detective you sure ask some really dumb questions."_

Robin frowned at his friend's attempt to avoid answering the question. _"First, there's no such thing as a dumb question," _he heard Raven scoff—mentally of course—_"and second, you know exactly what I meant. What's keeping you from resting to prepare for what's coming?"_

After the long pause he was sure he might have pushed too hard, but then there was a knock at his door. He knew who it was before he even got out of his chair, but he didn't expect the sight that greeted him when he opened his door. A weary and tousled looking Raven waited patiently on the other side of the door. When they had been communicating mentally he saw Raven much as she usually looked, but the girl standing at his door had bags under her eyes, unbrushed and ruffled hair, and dressed in her uniform and a cloak that looked rumpled as if she hadn't removed it in some time.

She looked up when he opened the door and Robin stared back, taking in her appearance. Finally, she spoke.

"Are you going to let me in so we can finish our conversation or shall we talk in the hallway?"

Robin half grinned, noting that though she looked half dead her voice and wit were alive as ever. He moved back from the door and cleared off a chair covered in clothes and files before sitting in his own chair at his desk.

Raven sat in the now available chair and looked straight at him. "There is no preparing for what's coming Robin."

Robin was a little surprised at the complete resignation in her voice, but patiently waited for her to elaborate.

She sighed. "I can't sleep because the only thing I see when I sleep is destruction, fire, my father…and all of you. And it's like one of those nightmares where no matter what's happening around you, you can't do anything about it. Except this one is going to come true."

Robin leaned forward in his chair and considered the girl in front of him, looking not like the fearless super-heroine he knew so well, but like a lost and scared teenager. He'd only seen her look this way once before, when she was kneeling on the floor of her room beneath the giant hole in her ceiling. He didn't know what to say to her then, but there had been a large dragon that needed to be fought.

Now there was no dragon, and she needed to hear something.

"Raven, I know you think that this has all been predetermined, that you can't escape your destiny, but I've lived my life pushing the limits of what should be possible. I've had to believe all my life that there is no such thing as a limit, that the impossible is only impossible because nobody's ever done it before. You have to believe that there's more to this than we know. We'll find a way to fight back."

Raven looked past him at the monitor on his desk. "So is that why you can't sleep? You're trying to find a way to do the impossible?"

Robin turned around and glanced at the searches he was running in the four greatest occult archives in the world, one housed in a small corner of the computer in the batcave. He turned to Raven and smiled, "Yeah, you might say that. Except I wouldn't necessarily say it was the impossible. Here, I want to show you something." Robin got out of his chair and motioned for Raven to sit in it. When she had he leaned over her shoulder and brought up a page he had finished reading before they started their conversation.

"This was a doomsday prophecy involving the turn of the millennium—" Raven turned a raised eyebrow at Robin "—hey, don't look at me. I don't write this stuff, I just read it. Anyway, this prophecy was very clear in its signs and its results, and it actually did come to pass."

"And this is supposed to make me feel better how?" Raven tiredly asked.

"It came to pass, but the ones involved were able to counter its effects. You see, the prophecy only spoke about the events leading up to the fulfillment of the prophecy—they said nothing about what happened afterwards."

Raven turned to look at Robin as he spoke and pulled up another case he had found. _"How does he keep this perpetual optimism? How can he possibly see a way out?"_

"Raven? Did you say something?"

"Uh, no. Anyway, you were saying?" Inwardly and little more carefully this time, she thought, _"Oops, I guess I'll have to remember it works both ways when Robin's involved and think a little quieter."_

Robin continued to show her what he'd found during the hours when he should have been asleep. At some point he found he was kneeling next to the chair she was in with his arm draped around the back of the chair. He looked up then and found that Raven had fallen asleep. _"Hmm, I guess I win after all."_ Raven stirred as he finished his thought and he froze. _"Think quietly…right…"_ To help him keep his thoughts to a minimum he hit the play button on his mp3 player and relaxed a little more as the strains of a Coldplay song filled his ears.

Robin gingerly pulled his chair away from the desk and scooped Raven's sleeping form into his arms, trying to think as little as possible as he did so. He tapped the door release with his foot and stepped into the hallway headed towards Raven's room, all the while wondering if Raven had maybe not been eating so much since her birthday, as she felt lighter than when he had caught her that night. Finally arriving at her door, he balanced her carefully against his knee and the wall while he punched the override code and opened her door. He reaffirmed his grip on Raven and moved into her room towards her bed, which he set her on carefully. After unclasping her cloak and laying it over a chair, he moved to the door and looked back to find that Raven had already pulled the sheets up over herself and was nestled into one of her large pillows. He stopped to just watch her sleep. After a moment he closed her door and began to sing along with the song playing in his ears.

"…_I dive in at the deep end / you've become my best friend / I wanna love you but I don't know if I can / I know somethin' is broken and I'm tryin' fix it / Tryin' to repair it any way I can…"_

In her room Raven pulled the sheets around her a little more tightly and smiled slightly…

Two days later Raven woke with the dawning sun. A burning sensation caused her to sit up rather quickly and she knew immediately that the arrival of the new day had caused her birthmarks to glow their unearthly red. She looked down at herself and spoke in a whisper.

"No…"

* * *

**A/N (2):** For those who don't recognize the song the Robin sings to himself it's called X&Y by Coldplay. I don't really know where this story came from, but I thought it fit nicely into that space of time between Raven's birthday and the morning of The End. My version of subtlety is anything but subtle, so the implications of this story are obvious. I can't help my preference in shipping, so please don't bother me about it. I hope you enjoyed it, and regardless that you'll let me know what you think.

**_Edit:_** After listening to the song a couple more times I decided that the lyrics I had looked up were incorrect, so I've changed them from "she'd become my best friend" to "you've become my best friend." I also noticed a word missing in one of Robin's lines, so I fixed it. Note to self, never trust a beta reader you're related to by blood.


End file.
